Culture at Crisis Point -- Giles Auty

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“Giles Auty was one of only four outstanding art critics in Britain in the past forty years”
-- Paul Johnson , The Spectator, February 17, 1996

When I switched course in mid-career from being a painter to a writer I certainly experienced a few nervous moments. Would I ever feel as
confident about writing as I did with a paintbrush in my hands? Then
purely by chance, after years of wondering, I met an Italian Professor
of English at a cocktail party in Venice. “I can’t believe I’ve met
you” he told me “because I am always holding your writing up as a model
for my students.” How thrilled my late father, a noted English scholar
himself, would have been to know that I was at least trying to maintain
family standards.

“G. K. Chesterton surely had essays such as these in mind when he wrote,
‘No criticism of Rembrandt is as good as Rembrandt; but it can be so
written as to make a man go back and look at his pictures.’ Giles Auty,
well-known as art critic and painter, is gifted with a writing style
that shuns impenetrability. It challenges us to go back and take a fresh
look, not just at Rembrandt, or Signorelli, but at political
correctness, global warming, post-modernism, democracy, our education
system, Catholicism, the media, and life itself. He does this in an
entertaining way, and even dares to suggest answers.”
-- Fr Paul Stenhouse, Editor of Annals Australia

Giles Auty was born in Kent but educated as a boarder in Essex. He
worked originally as a painter but in mid-career switched to writing art
criticism. In England he played representative cricket with various
future stars of the game. He came to Australia in 1995.